Wearables Could Soon Know You’re Sick Before You Do
Mike Snyder was clearing brush behind his brother’s western Massachusetts house, erecting a fence to keep deer from the blueberries, when the tick bit him. A few days later, on a flight to Norway with his family, his palms itched and his head grew woozy. So the Stanford geneticist dumped a bunch of wearable sensors on his tray table and began doing what he does best: measuring himself.
Low blood oxygen, said the Masimo pulse oximeter housing his finger, and the globe-shaped Scanadu he held against his forehead every few minutes. Weird heart-rate, said the two Basis smart watches strapped to his wrists. Immediately he feared the worst: Lyme disease. Caught too late, Lyme hijacks the body’s immune system to seek and destroy joints, nerves, brain tissue, and—this really made him anxious—the heart. Once his temperature rose in Oslo, he sped to the doctor.
